


our bones are broken still

by fideliant



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fideliant/pseuds/fideliant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s an emptiness inside of him where something bright used to occupy, and his aching bones creak around the spaces left behind. He’s just not cut out for this, Bilbo thinks.</p>
<p>or, <i>Six Things that will Never Happen to Bilbo Baggins.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	our bones are broken still

i.

It is very quiet when the war is finally over. The world is smoke and fire when Bilbo comes to, but quiet. He’s not sure what he was expecting, to be honest. More chaos, maybe. More death. There most likely was, just not now. Bilbo feels ill thinking about it, though that may partly be in due to the concussion he’s certain he has. His head spins as he gets to his feet, won’t stop spinning even as he picks his way through the debris like a scavenger shipwrecked upon some foreign land.

He does not have to walk long before he encounters the first of the fallen. Menfolk and dwarves and elves and eagles. He’s afraid to risk a familiar face, forbids himself from keeping count. Too soon, too soon. It’s easier to look at the faces of the enemy, as if it’s some reassurance that there’s that much less in the world that could still possibly hurt all he holds dear. This is how he is found, holding a dead warg’s glassine stare, unable to speak or move until he registers the sound of own name ringing out over the dusty hills.

Bard is the one who finds him and gives him a lift to the others, Bard with his indignations and righteousness and goodness knows what burdens he’s had to carry on his family name. Bilbo can see it in his posture the same way he has seen it in Thorin. But Bard has a strong back, and Bilbo is grateful for that.

He continues to watch the dead on the way. It isn’t the first time he’s a little higher up than usual, and he’s found that perspective changes things. Nothing changes here. Everything is the same as it was on the ground, pale and blood-soaked, the firm language of death. And he’s here, getting ferried to safety, and that’s…a little messed up, isn’t it, always being the one who survives for not having done much at all to prevent any of this. He got knocked out by a rock. Still doesn’t seem right. It could’ve easily been anyone else and then he would be the one lying dead now, throat sliced open, part of someone else’s deep and personal loss. Bilbo doesn’t want to die. He has to remind himself that none of them probably did, either.

They make it to a tall white tent splashed with battle flags and colours, where Bard lets Bilbo off in front of Gandalf. Arm in sling, the wizard gives Bilbo a glance and nods in the direction of the tent.

He finds Thorin inside, trussed up to the shoulders in swathes of bloodied bandages and looking like hell. When Thorin sees him and his face lifts, Bilbo stops breathing, can’t breathe, because this is the moment where it feels like the danger has passed, they’re not going to die, it’s not the apocalypse after all. But then he remembers the number he has yet to hear and the names that will be spoken in the past tense from here on out, that there’s still so much _time_ for their world to end, and he’s staggering over to press his face into Thorin’s sleeve with sobs catching in his throat and tears streaking his cheeks, and Thorin holds him, and Bilbo lets him.

***

ii.

Nobody ever tells Bilbo about what comes afterwards. He ends up wandering through the days to follow, off-balance, like a child learning how to crawl. Sometimes there are more funerals to attend than post-war talks of leadership and rebuilding and he can’t decide if it’s better to get to cry himself out or to pretend to have an inkling of what’s going to happen now. Strangers in the hallways want to shake his hand. Others sing his praises to no foreseeable end. Too much is expected of Bilbo, so much more misunderstood. He’s just a hobbit who tried to do the right thing, and here he is, more visible than he has ever been in his life. Being thrust into the spotlight makes him queasy. There are so many people who look to him for direction that using the ring to vanish from the world just doesn’t seem enough, anymore.

The idea continues to tempt, though. As of late he succumbs to it more often than usual, when the overwhelming press of attention becomes too dizzying to take and he needs some space to breathe. Erebor is still wreck and ruin and there are a hundred places to hide for one so small such that it makes invisibility seem superfluous. His favourite spot is up in the highest rafters, where he can sit against a beam with his legs dangling free, where he runs no risk of being found, or worse, encountering any more victims of the Firedrake’s first coming. Bilbo cannot think what it must be like to mourn a kingdom’s worth of his own people. This is a question he will never have the courage to ask Thorin.

These precious few minutes of clarity are what he needs the most. He feels so _old,_ generally a preposterous thought at fifty years of age for a hobbit, but it’s true. There’s an emptiness inside of him where something bright used to occupy, and his aching bones creak around the spaces left behind. He’s just not cut out for this, Bilbo thinks. When he tries to picture the person who’d signed on to an adventure not nine months ago, all he can fathom are the smallest of fragments. He’d been so young, then, for what feels like eons ago. He already can’t remember being that hobbit.

Balin’s voice echoes in his ears, _you don’t have to do this._ No, Bilbo doesn’t, but there’s a sense of ownership to it that he cannot shake. They are all part of this, like it or not, and he gets to bear that now. You don’t start a war without being prepared to deal with the aftermath, even if it means becoming the keeper of another person’s grief. When it’s finally time to bury Fili and Kili, Thorin stays in the underforge for hours after the joint funeral and doesn’t emerge until dawn’s first light breaks over the water. Bilbo leaves some food and a candle out for him, just in case.

So, he supposes that he stays for this — for Thorin and his brooding silences, the clasp of his calloused hands, the gaps in their conversations neither of them are able to acknowledge just yet. He knows it long before anyone else begins to suspect; Thorin is scarred, Thorin is fragile, Thorin is war-torn, and Bilbo is afraid of what will happen to him if he goes. He wants to say it’s an act of selflessness but more often than not it strikes him as stupid and nowadays it seems like neither. Because the simple truth of the matter is that Thorin needs someone who loves him and Bilbo does despite himself and everything that’s happened, has loved him for longer than he dares to admit.

He’s never envisioned himself as the saviour of anything or anyone, not once in his life, but this is what he can do. Thorin is the one he can save.

***

iii.

First, Bilbo Baggins is sixty. When he’s not too tired to think about what that means for him, he is seventy, then eighty, and by the time he is ninety he is still Prince Consort to the King Under the Mountain. Forty years is an awfully long time to remain married to the same person — it’s seemed a lot longer than that. They spend their anniversary drinking ridiculously fine wine, picnicking out in the courtyard, in the sun, and having incredible sex, the things people in love are supposed to do. It’s one of those scarce days where Bilbo can remember what it means to be a Baggins once again. He’s drunk on love. Thorin smiles at him and he understands how one might come to conceive the notion of happiness without end.

This is, of course, the _before._ There have been murmurs buzzing through Erebor from the very start, small at first but steadily growing in frequency over the years. Bilbo’s not bothered by being stared at by passers-by in the hallways. What bothers him are the mutterings he doesn’t intend to hear but picks up anyway in the echoes, and it is then that he’s frozen to the spot, swaying like a tree in a storm, a hand covering his mouth to stop the whimpers from getting loose. Their words cling to him like disease, prickling under his skin in the chill of winter. He’s only found out when Thorin catches him crying in the bathroom, and even then it takes threats of raising hell for Bilbo to fold.

As expected, the issue sits poorly with Thorin. He is not a very benevolent person when it comes to dissension in the ranks, Bilbo has observed. He tolerates a lot of things, but disloyalty is not one of them. Speaking ill about Bilbo is another. This is a combination of both, transforming his rage from explosive to catastrophically volcanic. Bilbo has no guilty names to surrender, and this only makes it worse. There is a strongly-worded declaration by Thorin that quells the murmurs but doesn’t banish them entirely. Bilbo will take that over the alternative, any day. It’s enough that they have managed to get through this without spilling blood.

Still, it makes him think. That Thorin lacks direct successors since Fili’s and Kili’s deaths has always been a sticking point, if not _the._ It’s an issue that has been thrashed out in court meetings Bilbo vaguely remembers attending. Dain has been named heir apparent. Thorin’s rule and lineage ends with him and Bilbo. There will be no children between them; this is solid, unchanging fact beyond their control and hardly anyone's fault.

Despite this, he still finds it hard to look Thorin in the eye knowing that there’s nothing to be done about this. Not everyone wants to have children, Bilbo is aware. Except not everyone has thousands of years of legacy they need to preserve, and Bilbo’s grown so used to fighting Thorin’s battles that claiming this one too seems second nature. He wonders if Thorin ever dreamed of having children the way Bilbo himself did when he was a young bachelor of forty, if Thorin too has a shortlist of names that he will never have to narrow down over a swollen belly. Then, he also wonders if Thorin has ever regretted marrying someone who couldn’t give him any of that.

He knows that Thorin loves him. Doesn’t mean any of it is untrue.

Strangely enough, Thorin seems distant in relation, unaffected. Only, it’s the lack of resentment that gets Bilbo the most. He is the reason Thorin won’t ever carry his flesh and blood in his arms and Bilbo can’t help but think that hate would be easier for them both. It only takes imagining tiny hands holding on to his fingers to make his mouth water. He wants that life for them so sorely it becomes difficult to look at other families without picturing Thorin better off with someone else. Maybe there is another person out there who would move their world for Thorin like Bilbo has, who could bear his silences and his children, who’s beautiful and knows the things to say to make people listen, who fits perfectly into royalty the way Bilbo never could.

Leaving becomes an option he entertains with serious consideration. He doesn’t know what it’d solve, but Thorin won’t have to see him falling to pieces and that’s something. He keeps a bag half-packed in the closet and looks at it several times a day as if this will tell him the right thing to do. Too often he wants to clamber inside with it, close the doors and finally come undone in the safety of sight unseeing.

His ninety-first birthday comes and goes and he just feels so _empty._ They go to the Woodland Realm and spend the week surrounded by music and good books, and this makes things marginally better. The laughter of elven children playing in the courtyards has Bilbo smiling instead of looking away so that nobody can see his face. Thorin, grizzled and mellow, laughs along with them and this is the first indication that maybe, just maybe everything will turn out alright for them.

The next, and penultimate indication, is this: it’s six weeks after when Frodo happens and Thorin is picking the tyke up and swinging him around in the air; Frodo lets out a noise of unbridled joy, eyes wide with endearment as he goes _higher, uncle, higher_ between bounces, and Bilbo, standing by to watch on, feels his heart open for the first time in months.

***

iv.

The ring speaks to him. Whispers creep from it through the thick fog of night, where the dreams become so real he can taste the blood caught between his teeth. It hisses in tongues Bilbo shouldn’t be able to understand and tells him things with his own voice in his own head until it becomes difficult to know which thoughts in there still belong to him. He doesn’t say anything to Thorin but is careless with himself one too many times; a furtive look, a faltering, a soft-toned croon of _precious._ Thorin notices. He’s not stupid. For being so painfully obvious, Bilbo can’t say that he’s surprised at all.

“You’ve been saving me from the dark for so long,” Thorin tells him quietly. His expression holds nothing but the purest beseeching. “Let me do the same for you.”

Bilbo shies away, fingertips passing along the cool metal of the band in his pocket. Outside the window, the quarter-moon has come up translucent, the only light in a cloudless sky. He has seen the nightmares take hold of Thorin on a hundred nights like this one, twisting his body in his sleep, fists flying as he wakens, seizing the screams from his throat. Bilbo has nightmares, too. He still makes it a habit to hide the bruises before daylight exposes them. When Bilbo had let Thorin see his sprained wrists the first time it happened, Thorin wouldn’t touch him for days.

He says, with a sigh, “It’s just…I’ve had it for so long, and. I can’t imagine living without it, you know?”

In one swift motion, Thorin crosses the room and embraces him. Engulfed by his warmth, Bilbo feels himself relax into the familiarity of it. In all their time together this simple, powerful gesture has never failed to soothe him, not even once. He has no idea what it is about Thorin’s presence that manages to render so much calm in a space overflowing with chaos.

“I can’t imagine how it'd be like — living without you,” Thorin croaks, and Bilbo only realises the truth of it when Thorin clutches at him closer than a drowning person would a lifeline. He doesn’t dare move.

“Don’t be daft,” Bilbo says, shaking his head as he tries for a grin intended to placate. He holds a hand up to Thorin’s hair to brush the braids he’d helped put in that morning. “If I was going to go, don’t you think I’d have left sooner than this?”

Thorin’s arms around him tighten, as if this is all he needs to do to keep them both afloat. The heavy despair in his eyes reminds Bilbo that he isn’t the only one who fears he may not have any choice in the matter.

Suddenly exhausted, Bilbo hugs back, and rests his forehead against Thorin’s chest, and thinks _tomorrow._ “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he murmurs, because then Frodo will be awake and there will be breakfasts to prepare, and it’s better to think about his life in terms of the things that fill it with light and not the secrets he’s grown tired of locking away in the shadows.

Though proffering a truce has very rarely worked, Thorin’s mouth twists and Bilbo knows that there will be no conflict tonight. Thorin nods then, short and slow but relenting, and he repeats, _“Tomorrow,”_ like a hush, like a promise.

***

v.

In the end, it doesn’t even matter, because Gandalf forces his hand with talk of what will eventually come to pass, and Bilbo would sooner die than have another war tacked on to his name. He gives up the ring to Frodo, not trusting anyone else with its darkness, and the war still finds them anyway, scorching its way across the continent from the sulphurous pits of Mordor. When Thorin is stepping into his armour Bilbo can barely breathe, because this isn’t right at all, he got rid of the ring to keep them safe, and it was for naught; he feels cheated, and it makes him angry, it makes him _furious._ It’s hard to think that he hasn't got the right.

“I need you,” is the height of Bilbo’s desperation, and he sees the precise half-second in which it almost works. Almost. He immediately wants to laugh at himself for even trying. There have been years of them and he still doesn’t know the most fundamental things about Thorin, it seems.

Thorin smiles a little as he lashes Orcrist to his waist. The grey in his hair and beard is almost silver in the firelight, makes him look tragically handsome. Bilbo can’t help but think of statues erected in remembrance of heroes who have long perished in battle. He has to fight images of Thorin’s face cast in lifeless bronze, with cold eyes that look sternly through him and not at him with recognition.

Thorin says, “I’m needed out there,” and sounds so sorry that Bilbo feels his stomach clench. He knows the game that’s being played here. He’s had an entire lifetime to become versed in negotiating the things a person has to sacrifice to nobler ends.

“This isn’t your _fight_ ,” Bilbo says hotly. Like how Moria wasn’t Balin’s, or Oin’s, and especially not Ori’s. Their absence still scalds on occasion, as and whenever Bilbo remembers they now only number nine instead of fourteen. It feels like they’re being crossed off, one by one. He thinks about how improbable it is for the rest of them to survive through this and it’s all he can do not to fall down sobbing, because this is it, the nightmare which has never changed, that Thorin is finally going to run off like the others and get himself killed. The thought of waking up alone fills Bilbo with more terror than the ring had ever managed to pour into him over the decades.

“My people are going to fight,” Thorin says, low and controlled. “I won’t leave them without a king, not now. I have to go.”

Bilbo turns to stare into the fireplace. Flames lick at the grate, turning from red to yellow to orange. He faintly remembers, not without particular reason, _we shall all burn together._  There's only one thing for it. “I’m coming with you,” he decides out loud.

“No.”

“Why not?” Frodo might have Sting and the shirt now, but that doesn’t mean Bilbo can’t swing a sword at whatever stays still long enough. If he’s learned anything from leaving the Shire, it’s that he’s a fighter. He will lay himself down if it means getting them to the part where Thorin is safe and breathing and _alive._

Thorin shakes his head. “It’s too dangerous. You could get hurt out there.”

“I could get hurt anywhere.”

The look Thorin gives Bilbo tells him that they are both aware of this. Still, Thorin shakes his head again and sighs and says, “You are not coming. That’s final.”

“What do you expect me to do, then?” He realises, too late, what has always become of those loved by martyrs. His insides feel cold, as if he’s being drowned in ice water. “You just want me to stay here, don’t you?”

“It’s safest in Erebor,” Thorin continues, looking down as he fastens his belt buckle with a snap. “The palace is well-guarded. I’ve made sure of it. Nothing is going to able to reach you in here. You’ll be safe.”

“Safe?” Bilbo parrots, incredulous. “Thorin, nowhere’s safe. Nobody’s safe. You know that. I’m not going to let you do this.”

“Bilbo, please —”

“I don’t believe…!”

For an instant Thorin looks angry, but then it melts away and he is reaching out to take Bilbo by the shoulders. “I thought I lost you,” he says, his voice beginning to shake. “In the battle. Nobody saw you anywhere, and I. You were just _gone._ We thought you were dead. I can’t lose you again. I won’t.”

Bilbo opens his mouth to argue and all that falls out is a sob, because he's afraid, Thorin's afraid, and there’s nothing more to be said. He may be a fighter but Bilbo has never been a soldier, and now the world is going to burn and he is in danger because of that, and Thorin is too unselfish to do nothing while that is still the case. Sometimes Bilbo hates the fact that they chose each other. Their lives were supposed to be so very different from this.

So instead, he says, “I just — oh, Thorin. I don’t know how I’m going to do this without you.” It’s so easy to remember who they were in the past, when Thorin needed fixing and Bilbo had picked up the pieces to help him heal. That’s not where they are, now. Bilbo is the one who’s broken and there’s not going to be anyone who puts him back together. This doesn’t seem real. He’s still waiting for the part where he startles himself awake and finds that all this has just been one more of his many nightmares.

But Thorin smiles weakly and his fingers are gentle on the back of Bilbo’s neck and he says, “You’re the bravest person I know, _ghivashel._ You’ll do just fine.”

And that’s that, really. Bilbo looks down at the floor because it’s easier than looking at Thorin’s face. He wants to say more but he can’t. The words stutter and fall flat, lapsing into silence at the back of his throat. One of them must say that they’ll be okay, even if neither of them believes it. Bilbo tries, but all he can manage is a dry, heaving hiccough and it becomes clear that they have lost faith in even the hollowness of that. His hands tremble and he blinks the tears out of his eyes before he sniffs, “Just…say you’ll come back to me when it’s over, won’t you? Oh, just say that. Say you’ll come back.”

There are no promises, but Thorin holds him steady as they kiss, and Bilbo thinks whilst his eyes are fluttering shut, _don’t go where I can’t follow._

***

vi.

Spring arrives early, settling in the grass and trees and soft showers that make the earth smell rapturous. Memories of wind and sky, lilies full in bloom, the pipeweed scent of hazy days, calms him. The war has ended and the darkness is vanquished and they are here together, safe and alive. It’s a beautiful day outside. He sits quietly in the moving carriage with his hands folded in his lap and his head lolling on Thorin’s shoulder, a shawl wrapped around him. The weather is warm and dozy and Bilbo lets himself drowse without worry. The nightmares aren’t real and cannot hurt them. He remembers this every time before he goes to sleep.

“Almost there,” Thorin whispers, petting Bilbo’s snowy hair. He moves his other hand to cover Bilbo’s, working the pad of his thumb in circles over his wrinkled skin.

Bilbo surfaces in seconds and squints at the light streaming through the open window. Thorin’s profile shields him from the glare, lined and grey with age but not yet white, soft with concern, sun-edged. He shifts closer to Thorin, curling up against his side and resting his cheek on Thorin’s arm, not moving at all. “If I chose not to…if I stayed, you know why I would, don’t you?” he murmurs.

Thorin’s hand tightens in his. “You have to go. Everyone’s already waiting.”

“I’d stay for you,” Bilbo affirms, turning his head to gaze up at Thorin. His _âzyungel,_ his beloved of eighty odd years, he looks so sad at this. “I’d want you to be with me, when it’s time.”

And the time is near. Bilbo has sensed it creeping nearer and nearer with every day that passes. Lately he’s been feeling as old as his years, but he can’t deny that it has been a long time coming. He thinks about it often, about the silence, the slow-descending peace. It actually makes him smile. He’s not afraid.

“I want to be with you, too.” Thorin hesitates, swallowing visibly. His eyes tick to their clasped hands, then back to Bilbo with renewed conviction, and his voice is low and weighted, speaking as if every word is crucial. “If I could — I would give up so much. I would give anything, anything at all…”

But Thorin understands that what they want is immaterial, Bilbo can see, even though this isn't fair, and he will live on. Perhaps Thorin will also manage to forgive him, someday, but this is enough for now. He couldn't ask for anything more. Bilbo closes his eyes against the warmth of Thorin’s neck and smiles, listening to the sound of him breathing. “It always felt we had so much longer than this, didn’t it, and. You were the best, you know that? You’ve made me so happy.”

“I…that is good to hear.” His lips brush Bilbo’s temple, a lingering pressure that tickles and soothes and loves. “I am glad…so very glad that I met you.”

“We made good together, didn’t we?” Bilbo chuckles softly, suddenly very tired. It is getting difficult to continue keeping his eyes open. They are quiet for a long moment as they sit, just holding on to each other. The carriage trundles on, long shadows of trees passing by in the window. Then, Thorin is humming something melodic and sad to him and Bilbo is humming along, the words to the refrain forming on his lips: _and in dreams, we will meet again —_

When the carriage starts to slow down, he looks to Thorin again, raising a hand to touch his cheek. Seemingly perplexed for a moment, Thorin blinks back, eyes darkening with a fresh bout of sorrow. He already looks terribly, heartbreakingly lonely. Bilbo clears his throat and tries to say as levelly as the tears will allow, “Stay with me, please? Until…until the end.”

Thorin winces, fingers curling around Bilbo’s wrist. He's crying, too, but doesn't appear to take notice. The nod that follows is brief and nearly imperceptible, and he leans forward to press his mouth to Bilbo’s forehead.

“Until the very end.”

**Author's Note:**

> Just going to leave [this](http://www.scribd.com/doc/98387422/Khuzdul-Dictionary-E-K-v01-JUN12) here without comment.


End file.
